Daniel Thorson is a deep thinker.  He hosts a podcast called Emerge… 

Daniel’s podcast is about philosphy… with shades of Monastic Buddhism tossed in.  I really don’t understand it.

But I mention Daniel… because he completely missed the worldwide lockdown.   

March 13th… Daniel Thorson entered a monastery for 75 days of seclusion.  This is a few days before Rudy Gobert tested positive and the world stopped.  Since then Thorson was tucked away in silent meditation in northwestern Vermont… clueless to world events.

May 23rd he emerged.  Memorial Day weekend… he left seclusion and said “hey.  So what’s been goin’ on?”

Well, Daniel…  the NBA canceled the season.  The other sports followed. Almost every school in America shut down. The highways emptied. We figured out how to work from home.   Oil fell below zero.  Clorox shot to the moon.  100,000 dead. Zoom happened. We fought over masks  Ran out of toilet paper. meat got expensive.  40 million lost their jobs.

How you been?

Thorson tells the New York Times… he’s had a strange week… because catching up is completely different than experiencing the trauma the rest of us went through.

When he emerged he went to the grocery store expecting human contact.  But people backed away from him.  He’d never heard of social distancing… 

Now… everybody wants to interview him… He’s the only person in America… who missed the fear and Facebook fights.   The shortages and the long days stuck at home.    And he wonders… whether he should bother to catch up at all..

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